Harte Zeiten

"Hard Times. For These Times" - this is the title and subtitle of the work published in the weekly magazine "Household Words" from April to August 1854, whose focus is already clearly evident: the inhumanity that accompanies the ever-growing industrialization of the Victorian era. A rigid focus on rationality and numbers - "Facts, Facts, Facts!" - shapes interpersonal behavior in the business world and has corresponding effects on the disenfranchised workers, for whom Dickens exemplarily portrays the character of Stephen Blackpool. Blackpool does not hesitate to tell the hard-hearted industrialist Bounderby the truth about the situation of the weaving workers. The main plot is intertwined with numerous subplots, where anger over social injustice and satirical elements coexist.